Will Tigers Pony up for Skubal

[gehringer_2]

40 minutes ago, Shelton said:

I’m struggling to see what benefit he provides by being right handed when he can’t hit.

And McKinstry had a reverse platoon split last season. He's only had 8 AB against LHP and is hitless so far. IDK, somtimes it seems the management is slave to statistics until there's one that doesn't meet with their prejudices.

Edited 9 hours ago by gehringer_2

[chasfh]

2 hours ago, Edman85 said:

 

I think this was the plan, but a few things happened.

• Torres never got better. Short is basically the right handed option. Remember he was DFA'ed, but then brought back once Torres had to go on the IL.
• Around that time, they signed Paul DeJong, who could very easily be a better option than Short. Hell, you could probably call him up right now if you wanted to... except, he's out for the year with an injury now.
• Trei Cruz is still on rehab, and wasn't exactly banging the door down in AAA before his injury.
• And now Torres had a setback.

So now your primary shortstop in AAA is Max Burt, who they tried to send to AA before having to drag him back up when DeJong was hurt. Burt is a fringe guy with a career minor league OPS around 0.600. It's not some indictment on the org that he's their AAA SS right now. It's just been injury after injury after injury. Heck, Jack Penney, who was playing with the squad late in camp is just now getting his rehab going.

Hard to say if the injuries are bad luck or if something is afoot with the strength/training staff.

Not for nothing, It didn't help that Rainer's progress got pushed back a year by injury. Not that he'd be ready to help us now, but still.

[chasfh]

1 hour ago, gehringer_2 said:

And McKinstry had a reverse platoon split last season. He's only had 8 AB against LHP and is hitless so far. IDK, somtimes it seems the management is slave to statistics until there's one that doesn't meet with their prejudices.

Or maybe they saw something during live BP against LHPs that concerned them.

[Edman85]

2 hours ago, gehringer_2 said:

And McKinstry had a reverse platoon split last season. He's only had 8 AB against LHP and is hitless so far. IDK, somtimes it seems the management is slave to statistics until there's one that doesn't meet with their prejudices.

Season long platoon splits are a very small sample.

[gehringer_2]

2 hours ago, Edman85 said:

Season long platoon splits are a very small sample.

true enough but what else have you got then besides old-school conventional wisdom, the thing from whose errors and prejudices we are trying to inoculate ourselves in the analytics era? If a guy holds his own for 120 PA against LHP and in particular has a reasonable K rate - a number which usually does stabilize pretty fast, where's the strength in the argument against letting that keep playing out? It comes down to someone saying "well I've been managing baseball for X decades and I believe most guys will crash back to earth"

But any particular guy is not necessarily "most guys", so if all you have is a general prejudice, as the  Dude would say: "Well, that's like..just your opinion man"  

this also an area where you would think tech should start making a difference. The reason given that LHH have worse platoon splits on average then RHH is that RHH have no choice but to see a lot of RHP. But with Trajekt (et al), a LHH who wants to work at it can practice against good LHP as much as he wants. We'll see if that has any effect across the league over time.

 

Edited 4 hours ago by gehringer_2